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overview

Oculus Rift is a new virtual reality (VR) headset designed specifically for video games that will change the way you think about gaming forever. With an incredibly wide field of view, high resolution display, and ultra-low latency head tracking, the Rift provides a truly immersive experience that allows you to step inside your favorite game and explore new worlds like never before.

User reviews

If you have a chance to try out Oculus Rift somewhere, don’t hesitate, it’s well worth a drive! But for all developers, early adopters, ... VR or gadget enthusiasts out there, I think Oculus Rift development kit is well worth $300. There is plenty fun to be had, justifying the price.

First Looks

Like so many software demos running on the Oculus hardware, it was unnervingly effective. There's an inescapable urge to look everywhere but straight ahead while in Epic's Citadel world, even if the wood grain textures on the buildings were a bit more muddy than we'd like.

Let's not discount how amazing it is to move our head forward and have that action replicated one-to-one in-game. This means that the gauges in our cockpit are more than just window dressing: that's the HUD.

The Rift is certainly one of the most amazing things I've seen at CES this year--hell, in any year. It's not really possible to describe what it's like to use it, but as soon as I put the goggles on and turned my head, I think my mouth dropped. It's flat-out awesome.

It’s still way too early to say whether the Rift will gather enough support to literally change the face of PC gaming (and eventually mobile gaming). But based on our experience–and the smile it instantly brought to our face–we’d say the Rift is 3D gaming done right.

There's a scene in "The Matrix," where Neo first jacks into Matrix after leaving it via the red pill. The screen gets all warpy, and zooooom abruptly he's standing somewhere else. It's not much of an exaggeration to say this is what it's like putting on the Oculus Rift.

The Oculus VR team brought a prototype version of the developer kit to CES, and as much as I want to dislike the notion of VR games (remember Virtual Boy?) this headset does an amazing job of making you feel immersed in a virtual world.

So the Oculus Rift is fantastic. If you've used it in its original incarnation, you know that it's incredible. It's virtual reality done better than you've ever seen it before. It's revolutionary. And it's nothing compared to what's coming next. I mean Oh. My. God.

The new Rift also uses an outside, motion-sensing camera in addition to the accelerometer and gyroscope built into the Rift headgear to better track the headset's orientation as users move their heads.

Less vital, but still important: DK2 also updates the original's prone-to-drifting orientation tracking, and features a latency tester, a USB accessory port, and elimination of the original's control box.

It has HD resolution (960×1080 in each eye), also, and there’s a more consumer-friendly case design with hidden IR sensors, a power button and a single wire connection link which splits off into USB and HDMI end points.

It was immediately impressive and wholly immersive. When I leaned in for the first time, eyeballing a dwarf as he marched through a fireball-spewing level, I was briefly concerned my torso would bump into the stony edge of the game world.

Imagine any of the aircraft scenes in Top Gun and you get the idea. That dazzlingly immersiveness did make us feel dizzy at one point as we barrel rolled and looked up trying to lock on to an opponent. Amazing.

With the Rift in place, a fake gun in my hand and Call of Duty up on screen, I started gaming. I thought that I would have trouble adjusting to the virtual environment, but it was stunning how intuitive it became to turn in place.

The entire experience is great. Gone are the blurry bits and here is an experience we can truly get onboard with. From a user that wouldn’t be able to handle the first Oculus Rift device for more than a few minutes at a time, it’s now an experience we want, as soon as possible.

The experience is so immersive that it's actually a bit disorienting. Because the device currently has no headphones, the user is dropped into a 360-degree visual world that does not match the ambient sound in the room.

The bulky goggles felt light on my head, and the images covering my eyes immersed me inside a gaming world. When I moved my head, the images changed rapidly enough to match what I would see if I turned my head in normal life.

Whenever it appears, Oculus Rift seems set to mark a big shift in gaming. Clearly, though, there's work to do if the headset is to fulfil its potential - we can't see it becoming truly popular if it gets a reputation for making players sick.

... Oculus is making an increasingly compelling case for VR to become its own format, rather than just a peripheral gimmick. With the likes of PlayStation and possibly Xbox getting in on the action, this is seeming less a fad and more a genuine vision of the future.

The 1080p OLED panel still isn't high enough a resolution to avoid jagged edges — Oculus says the consumer version will have even higher resolution — but combined with special techniques to reduce blurring and motion sickness, the difference was already night and day.

The goggles can now do a much better job of giving you a sense of presence, or that you are immersed inside a virtual world. The technology represents a lot of progress and shows that Oculus is still striving to be the frontrunner in providing high-quality virtual reality experiences.

The industrial design is still a work in progress. It surely looks more polished than the initial one I’ve tried last year, but this is probably not how it would end up as a consumer device so I would advise not to judge the device by its looks.

The Rift was a surreal experience as always; when our opponent turned his head or leaned forward it gave his neck a stretched, snake-like appearance. And when one of the battling avatars leapt up onto your lap, you half expect to feel his little feet on your legs.

When I put on the Rift I was amazed by how great everything felt when you moved your head. It’s an experience unlike anything else being made right now. When I took the headset off, however, reality set in.

The new dev kit looks much more tidy than the Crystal Cove prototype we last saw. I was surprised at just how clean and tidy it looked at first glance, and was even more surprised at just how light it is in its final form.

THIS THING IS AWESOME! literally. Playing with it is largely unlike anything I have experienced before and I'm super excited to see what comes out with support for it. That said, it's important to keep in mind is that currently only the DEVELOPMENT units are available and are of a much lower...

Absolutely mind blowing every time I put it on. It's not perfect yet, but that's why it's still in development. It's getting infinitely better with each new version. Consumer Version 1 is looking like it is going to be awesome!